Check Out This Blog--Even If You Don't Speak French.

    I must, I MUST, I really must start a list of the blogs I regularly visit (a vow that's right up there with I must post more regularly, I must clean my office, I must finish planting bulbs in the garden, and I must quickly track down an on-line supply of bluebell bulbs because I can't find any here in France and I have visions of drifts of wistful blue replacing the wilderness area come spring). 
    The reason I've held off a blog listing is because, as my old history teacher would say about some of my projects, it demonstrably "lacks focus". Cooking, crafts, clothes. travel, design, gardening, my blogosphere loves are all over the map--and I mean that quite literally. Browsing posts on a Malaysian, Thai or Chinese food blog is almost as good as being there. 
     One of the most luscious French blogs I've found is http://pechedegourmand.canalblog.com/ All recipes, all likely to make you drool. No excuses about not speaking French. If food is one of your passions, you can probably translate enough to work out what you'd need to do to recreate each dish.

     The most recent recette was for a baked potato stuffed with smoked salmon and topped with thick cream and a poached egg. (By the way, both these shots are from the blog.)  I love how the author has set the potato on coarse salt, and primped it up with a sprig of dill.
    The post before that reminded me once again of the huge role that luxury ingredients play in the run-up to Christmas. What you see on that salad plate is a mix of foie gras, scallops, girolles (wild mushrooms) and truffles. Yum.